Point Of Impact (2001)

by Tom - Net Force 05 Clancy

  The upside of things were big bucks and big thrills. Dopers who were smart made fortunes, and they got to make the assorted varieties of cops look stupid while they did it. Big money, big rushes, the thrill of victory, and all that green to feed the machine.

  There was a downside, of course. Stupid dopers could get killed by a rival dealer. Or ripped off and maybe killed by a customer. Or busted and sent to the graybar hotel for twenty years on a heavy federal rap. Or busted by the local yokels. Lot of minefield in the illegal trade, and you couldn't complain to the cops if somebody pointed a gun at you and stole your dope or your money.

  The thing was, if you were a dealer, and if you did it long enough, and if you didn't move around a bunch while you were doing it, you were sooner or later going to get caught. Ninety-nine point ninety-nine percent of dealers who stayed in the biz for more than a few years in one place eventually got nailed. Sometimes it was a distributor who gave 'em up, sometimes it was an ex-wife or girlfriend, sometimes the cops found'em on their own.

  Once you got a lot of cash in your hands, it sometimes made you stupid. You bought expensive, flashy toys, you got to thinking because you were rich you were invincible, and just like Zeigler, all your money didn't mean squat when the bullets started to fly. You couldn't take it with you.

  So Drayne had always kept a low profile. No yachts, no car that couldn't be leased by half of L.A. No bodyguards with muscles and bulges under their jackets to make people wonder who you were who needed bodyguards. Absolutely minimal risks in sales, delivery, taking on new customers. Never more stuff in the house than necessary. Nobody knew what he did except for three people: Tad and the old couple who drove the RV. Tad would never give him up, and Ma and Pa Yeehaw were lifetime criminals who would go down with guns blasting before they let themselves be taken. If not, he'd have them bailed out and gone before the feds knew what they had.

  Not perfect, no ironclad guarantees, but he had been very careful. Until he got sucked into the glitz of Zeigler's movie-star circles. Even then, Drayne had stood in the back on the Zee-ster's coattails, and what the hell, it had been fun, watching every door open in front of them, women falling all over themselves to get close to them, and the reflected feeling of celebrity.

  It had never occurred to him that Zeigler would be the target of a raid. Feds just didn't kick in famous millionaires' doors; it just wasn't done.

  Well, it was now. And while they were probably okay, going to ground and turning invisible until all the heat died down was the way to play it. No reason to push things. He was ahead of the game. The feds were plodders, but they were like the tortoise: While the hare was taking a nap, they might creep up on him and bite him on the ass. Drayne wasn't going to give them that chance, no sir, thank you very fucking much.

  A month or two in Hawaii in the fall? You could do a lot worse. And worse was not the way to go.

  Soon as Tad got things taken care of, they were gonna hop on one of those big honkin' jumbo jets and zip on out to the islands. By the time they got back, all this other stuff would be old news.

  Old news.

  17

  Washington, D.C.

  Toni was going stir-crazy, she had cabin fever big time, and she had to get out of the house before she went totally bonkers. Yes, the doctor had told her to stay home and confine herself to light activity. Because, the doctor had said, if there were any more problems with cramping or bleeding, and she wanted this baby, she was going to wind up spending the rest of the pregnancy in bed, so best she not cause things to get to that state by being overactive.

  Toni's mother had, of course, agreed entirely with the doctor's assessment. Sure, she hadn't slacked off any when her babies were growing, Mama said, but that was different. She was healthy as a horse, and besides, all that fighting stuff Toni did was probably upsetting the baby anyhow.

  Toni didn't really have any place she wanted or needed to go, and she would window-shop in the mall if nothing else, as long as she didn't have to sit here alone in the place while Alex was off at work for one more day.

  She missed work more than she'd expected, and it wasn't the same doing little piddly consulting things on the net. There was no interaction with real people, no matter how good the virtual scenarios were. Yes, the state-of-the-art ScentWare ultrasonic olfactory generators gave some pretty authentic smells. The latest-generation haptic program from SensAble Technologies allowed you to feel pressure and touch, and of course, everybody's visuals were getting better every day, but the differences between the best VR stimware and reality were like light-years compared to millimeters; there was a long, long way to go.

  On a whim, Toni called Joanna Winthrop.

  "Hey, Toni! How's the pregnancy going?"

  "Awful. I feel like a bloated cow."

  Joanna laughed. "I hear that, and I sympathize completely. No matter how many times Julio told me I was beautiful, I knew I could stand next to the hippos at the zoo and nobody could tell us apart."

  "Alex doesn't understand. I know I'm whining, I can't stop myself, and as soon as I start, he runs and hides in the garage. That old car he's working on is going to be the most overbuilt classic in all creation. I think he's leaving early and coming home late from work just to stay out of my way."

  "Bet on it."

  Toni sighed. "So how is your baby?"

  "The demon child from Hell?"

  "What?"

  Joanna laughed. "He's great. That's just what we call him when we can't figure out why he's crying."

  "Does that happen a lot?"

  "Not really. But every once in a while, none of the usual things work. He's not hungry, he's not wet, he doesn't need to burp, he doesn't seem tired, he's too little to be cutting teeth. So far, the little battery-powered swing mostly does the trick, and if that fails, we put him in the car seat and take him for a ride in the car, and that pretty much calms him down. Or Julio takes him for a long walk. By the third or fourth mile, Julio says, he's usually okay."

  "Jesus," Toni said. "What have I done?"

  Joanna laughed again, louder. "I'm kidding, sweetie. He's a terrific kid, worth every penny. How are you doing, really?"

  Toni explained about her scrimshaw, and about how she was feeling cooped up.

  "Why don't you come on over and visit us? The baby is asleep, he'll be out for another couple hours, and I'd love to see you again. I've missed the crew at work."

  "Me, too," Toni said. "You're sure it's okay?"

  "Of course I'm sure. I'm a new mama and you're gonna be in a few months. If we can't help each other, who will?"

  Toni felt as if her load had been lightened immeasurably.

  "Thanks, Joanna. I'm on my way."

  Bobby's "work" phone jangled as he was looking for his suitcase in the garage. He frowned. Only a few people had the number, which was supposedly a direct line to his "office."

  He went to the kitchen and touched the com's caller ID button.

  Nothing; whoever was calling was blocked. Probably a wrong number. He tapped the speaker button.

  "Polymers, Drayne," he said.

  "Hello, Robert."

  Jesus Christ! "Dad?"

  "How are you?" his father said. He sounded old.

  "Me? I'm fine. How, uh, are you? Everything okay?"

  "I am well."

  "How's the dog?"

  "He's fine."

  There was a long pause.

  "What, uh, what's up, Dad?"

  "I have some bad news, I'm afraid. You remember your aunt Edwina's son, Carlton?"

  Aunt Edwina's son. He couldn't have just said, "Your cousin"?

  "Yeah, sure."

  "Well, he was in a boating accident yesterday. He passed away in the hospital this morning."

  "Creepy's dead?" Jesus.

  "I asked you not to call him that, Robert."

  Drayne shook his head. His father would remember that. Still worried about the name, even though the man was dead.

  Carlton Post had been called Creepy
as long as Drayne could remember. He was three years younger than Drayne, and whenever his folks had come to visit--Edwina was his old man's younger sister by five years or so--they'd brought their four kids along. Creepy was the only boy, and Drayne had usually been stuck watching him. Drayne didn't know who had nicknamed him in the first place; the oldest girl cousin, Creepy's sister, Irene, had passed the name along to Drayne once when she and Drayne had been teaching each other how to play doctor. The name came from the way he stared at people. He'd been a shrimpy little black-haired boy who looked at you crooked without blinking for what sometimes seemed like ten minutes.

  "What happened?" Drayne said. He hadn't known Creepy that well, but hearing about his death left him feeling oddly distressed.

  "He was waterskiing on Lake Mead. Apparently he fell and was run over by another boat. Knocked unconscious, then cut by the boat's engine propeller. He lost a lot of blood before he was fished out, and there was extensive head trauma."

  His father related the information as if talking about the weather, no excitement, no grief, deadpan and almost in a monotone. Fell. Run over. Cut. Always the cool federal agent.

  "Oh, man. That's awful. How's Aunt Edwina holding up"

  "She is, of course, greatly distressed."

  Creepy was dead. It was hard to imagine. The kid had grown up, gone to school at UNLV, married a girl he'd met there, gotten a degree in history, then stayed to teach high school somewhere outside Salt Lake City. Orem? Something like that? Him and--what was her name?--oh, yeah, Brenda, probably the only two non-Mormons for as far as the eye could see. They'd gotten a divorce after a couple years, and Creepy stayed there. It had been five, six Christmases since Drayne had seen his cousin. He'd actually turned out okay, a nice guy.

  "The funeral will be day after tomorrow at Edwina's church in Newport Beach. I'll be driving up for it."

  Edwina and her husband, Patrick, were Presbyterians. God's frozen people.

  His father was coming to L.A. Well, shit. So much for jetting off to Hawaii. Drayne said, "You, uh, need a place to stay?"

  "No, I'll stay at Edwina's or get a hotel room nearby. She'll need family support. The funeral will be at ten o'clock. Can you get off work to attend?"

  That was the kind of man his father was. If he'd still been working for the FBI when his nephew had been killed, he would have worried about shit like that. Sure, he'd have taken a personal day and gone, but he would have fretted over missing work. Duty was his reason to get up in the morning.

  Drayne said, "Sure, no problem, I can take off."

  "I'm going to be at Patrick and Edwina's at nine and then drive over to the church. You can meet me either place. You remember how to get to her house?"

  It had been a long time since he'd been there. "She still at that place overlooking the highway?"

  "Yes."

  "I can find it."

  "Good. I'll see you then. Good-bye, Robert."

  Drayne tapped the speaker button and shut the com off. That was his old man. Just the bare facts--who, where, what, when--and he was done. No emotion in his voice that his sister's only son, his nephew, was dead; it was just a flat recitation: "Your cousin is dead. We're going to bury him. We'll see you there. Good-bye."

  Jesus fucking Christ.

  Drayne sighed. Well, okay, this was gonna put a small crimp in his plans, but Creepy had been his cousin. He was family. You couldn't just not go, not if you ever had to bump into the rest of the family again. Traffic would be a bitch that time of day, he'd have to get up and get rolling on the PCH early, by seven, at least. Maybe six-thirty. You didn't want to be caught in a traffic jam on the way to a funeral.

  Shit. First it was Zeigler, then Creepy. Bad things came in threes. He hoped the next one wouldn't be Tad.

  Or himself...

  December 1991

  Stonewall Jackson High School Cafeteria, Cool Springs, Georgia

  Jay Gridley stood in the cafeteria line. The woman behind the counter slopped a big ice cream scooper full of mashed potatoes onto his compartmentalized baby blue Melmac plate, turned the scoop over and pressed it against the creamed spuds to make a concave indentation, dipped the scoop into a pan of greasy brown liquid, and said, "Chon'tgravyth'thet?"

  Jay made the translation mentally: "Do you want gravy with your mashed potatoes?"

  By the time he'd figured out what she said, the server had already poured the warm goo all over the plate, slopping into the green beans, the hamburger steak, and the little empty slot where Jay had planned to have a piece of cherry pie. Forget that.

  "Uh ... sure," he said, way late.

  She handed him the plate back, under the angled glass sneeze guard.

  This was where Mr. Brett Lee of the Drug Enforcement Administration had gone to high school, graduating at age seventeen, third in the class of'91, before going off to Georgia Tech to get his master's in criminology. He'd gone to work for the DEA the year after he had graduated college and had thus spent nearly thirteen years working for them.

  In the real world, Jay would be looking at the school yearbooks, talking to teachers and fellow students, downloading pictures and stats, and putting together an education history of Mr. Lee. In VR, he had built a scenario that would let him walk through the school itself--or rather what he imagined a place named after a Southern Civil War hero might look and feel like--and absorbing the information in a much more interesting manner.

  Lee had been well-liked, had gotten good grades, and had hung with jocks, having been a middle-distance runner on the school's track team.

  Jay had come as far back as high school because he had not been able to discover any connection between Brett Lee and-Zachary George either in their work careers or college. While the two men were only a year apart in age--George was thirty-seven, Lee, thirty-six-Lee had been born and raised in Georgia, while George had grown up in Vermont. When Lee was at Georgia Tech, George had been at New York University. They had not crossed paths that Jay could tell until they were both working for the federal government, and while there was no record of their first meeting there, there was some kind of friction apparent by the time both had been in harness for a few years.

  Jay had all that--the two didn't like each other, maybe they just rubbed each other the wrong way or something--but the cause of the conflict had not come to light. He could pass on what he'd come up with to Michaels, but it didn't tell them anything they didn't already know.

  The young Lee, sitting at a table with four guys and two girls from the track teams, dipped a French fry in catsup and ate it as Jay moved to sit at a conveniently empty table behind the group.

  Convenient, hell. He had designed the setup that way himself.

  The conversation was hardly enlightening. They talked about things of interest to teenagers: music, movies, who was going out with whom, teachers they hated, the usual. And in the twenty-year-old jargon, it was pitifully dated. Lee was close to Jay's age, and if he'd talked like this, he must have seemed a terrible dweeb to any passing adult. Or dork. Or dickhead. All phrases the boys used fast and furiously, mixing and matching as needed:

  "Yeah, well, Austin is a dickhead dweeb," one of the boys said. "He gave me a fuckin' C on the midterm because I didn't use the right color ink!"

  "Yeah, Austin's a dork, all right," another boy said.

  One of the girls, a pretty bottle-blond in a gray T-shirt held together with safety pins, said, "Yeah, but he's kinda cute."

  The other girl, a brunette with hair worn so short as to almost be a crew cut said, "Yeah, too bad he's gay."

  One of the boys said, "Gay? Shee-it, he ain't gay. I seen him lookin' up Sissy Lou's skirt and gettin' a hard-on in debate one, you know how she sits with her knees apart. You're just pissed'cause he don't look at you that way. Maybe if you wore a skirt instead of jeans all the time, you'd see."

  "I don't think Jessie here owns a skirt," the third boy said, poking the short-haired girl on the shoulder. "But I hear she's got some black bikini pant
ies."

  Jessie slapped at the third boy. "You won't never find out, dickhead."

  "Whatever, " the safety-pinned girl said, dismissing the topic.

  He could die of boredom here, Jay thought. Or worse, start laughing so hard he'd spray milk out of his nose.

  Brett Lee said, "He's not queer, he's just smart, is all. He got us that trip to the Debate Finals in Washington, D.C."

  "Pro'lly had to give somebody a blow job to do it," Safety-Pin said.

  "I'm tellin' you, he's not queer," the second boy said.

  "Hell, Hayworth, maybe he was lookin' at you instead of Sissy when he got the hard-on," Jessie said.

  "Your ass!" Hayworth said.

  "Whatever," Safety-Pin said.

  Jay shook his head. Oh, yeah, he was gonna learn a lot here. Jesus.

  "So," Jessie said to Brett, "you going to the debate thing?"

  "Yeah. There's gonna be people from all over the country there."

  "Mostly Yankees," Hayworth said. " 'N' queer Yankees, at that."

  "I'm goin'," Lee said. "I'm not gonna live the rest of my life here in Hickburg. I'm gonna meet people, make friends, get myself a job where I can make a shitload of money and retire by the time I'm forty."

  "Your ass," Hayworth said.

  Jay shook his head. He'd heard enough of this.

  Then, as he was about to leave, he had a thought.

  Maybe Zachary George had been interested in debate in high school?

  Hmm. Well, he could take a little run up to Montpelier High and check that out. Easy enough to do when you were Jay Gridley, master of virtual space and time.

  18

  Washington, D.C.

  Michaels walked into the Columbia Scientific Shop, not expecting much from the small size of the storefront. An error, he quickly found.

  The place didn't have much frontage, but it opened up once you were inside. It wasn't the size of a Costco or anything, but it was a lot bigger than he'd expected.